Here are the main characters that made, and broke, the year in queer

#CanadasDragRace has winnowed the cast down to a very competitive final eight, with five separate maxi-challenge winners, two additional challenge threats and a Lip Sync Assassin

We’re over halfway through this season of #CanadasDragRace, and one more queen must be sent home. Who falls short of next week’s Lip Sync Slay-Offs?

From “How the Grinch Stole Christmas!” to “A New York Christmas Wedding” Xtra staff picked our favourite watches that make the yuletide gay

Lil Nas X, Big Freedia and Tegan and Sara all have some holiday bops and bangers

Twenty-five years after the Vancouver bookstore’s win against Canada Customs, the struggle for the freedom to read isn’t over

STORY CALLOUT — @xtramagazine.com I'm working on a story about nonbinary people who work in food service/bartending/retail. My story is about how nonbinary people are treated in this industry, the pressure to use binary pronouns while working, and how they can get better support.

"While I’ve appreciated the excellent high-quality art and culture that 2025 has produced ... what I will remember from this year is the pure volume of slop I’ve consumed to keep myself sane through it."

Readers have spoken, and this year’s most-read stories here at Xtra were a solid mix of politics, pop culture and sex—and we wouldn’t have it any other way.

A federal election, a hot gay hockey show and sex in the bushes were all the rage this year. Find out what other Xtra stories attracted readers in 2025.

Mark Carney’s government needs to stand up for our rights or we’re headed in the direction of the U.S.

A chat show challenge on #CanadasDragRace sees two teams understand the assignment—and one team utterly fall apart

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times—here are our 2025 picks of the people and groups that helped us hit those highs, and plummeted us to those lows.

From the moment we met, I knew I wanted her in my future—but for me, friendship has to come before romantic love.

There’s a new maxi-challenge winner in town on #CanadasDragRace after this week’s chat show challenge

Quentin Tarantino’s martial arts epic has been tainted by shocking revelations about what went down behind the scenes. Can it be redeemed?

Queer people and their allies have spent a year figuring out who our friends are—and we’ve learned that there are fewer of them than we’d hoped, writes @judedoyle.bsky.social.

We’ve been seeing each other, as friends, for nearly six months. I’m not ready to kiss her, or hold her hand or ask her to be more than friends yet, but I know one day I will be.

#CanadasDragRace has eliminated a third of its cast, but where do the rest fall in the power rankings?

#CanadasDragRace takes on daytime talk with “The Shade,” and one queen who came into the season hyped makes good on her potential

In 2025, nothing topped the pure quality human-made garbage that rotted all of our brains.

What were the 10 best lip syncs from across the #DragRace franchise in 2025?

The safe execution of shows like ‘The Last of Us’ and ‘Gen V’ alongside the shockingly brutal deaths to hit queer characters on ‘The Wheel of Time,’ ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ and beyond highlight the troubling backward trajectory of LGBTQ2S+ characters on the small screen.

We’re nearly halfway done with this season of #CanadasDragRace, and a couple of queens are rising to the top of the pack

Here are the Xtra team’s selections for the very best queer and trans books of the year.

From Brooke Lynn Hytes’s lip syncing master class to a showdown between Filipina sisters, 2025’s top 10 #DragRace lip sync ranking has it all.

Our recommendations for the year’s best fiction and non-fiction, from Alison Bechdel to Ocean Vuong

Each year, we here at Xtra put our heads together to think through the calendar year and what news broke the internet and our hearts. These are our picks for 2025.

For decades, this Vancouver bookstore fought for my right to read the erotica that helped me understand myself, writes Zena Sharman.

Here are the Xtra team’s picks for the very best LGBTQ2S+ movies of the year.

It makes sense to want to be in the know—but what if being informed of every little thing happening in this big, wide world is actually hurting you, asks @katelynburns.com?

The drag vacation series “Slaycation” returns to Canada for a second season, and we talked with #DragRace legend Silky Nutmeg Ganache all about it.

As democracy dies in the U.S., it’s actively under attack in Canada.

Across all kinds of #DragRace seasons airing this year, it’s the international editions that reign supreme on our ranking of the 10 best lip syncs of 2025.

Today marks 25 years since Little Sister's victory at the Supreme Court of Canada. And the fight against the censorship of queer books in Canada continues today.

The “Slaycation” Season 2 premiere sees Silky Nutmeg Ganache and five fellow #DragRace alumni coming to Canada for some rest, relaxation and queenly bonding.

Alyssa Edwards continues her post-“Global All Stars” tour with an appearance on #CanadasDragRace

We used to be a real culture, where slop referred to the dregs of late-night Bravo or the latest Kim Petras album.

The #CanadasDragRace Season 6 cast is winnowing down bit by bit, and the true contenders for the crown are beginning to surface

As democracy dies in the U.S., Canada is next. xtramagazine.com/power/politi...

Stories about threesomes, department-store cruising and bathhouses all made a splash this year

In the wake of last week’s double Beaver disaster, #CanadasDragRace’s remaining queens have some beef to resolve

#CanadasDragRace brings the Reading Battles challenge from “Canada vs. The World” back, and leaves the top 10 to duel each other

From the shadow of Brat summer emerged a new trove of queer artists, bearing sounds we’ve never quite heard before. Here are some of our favorite songs from this year:

AI’s got nothing on good quality dumb entertainment—and only people can make that, writes @melwoods.me

For @xtramagazine.com's year-end package, I wrote about the dumb shit that helped me get through this year (from labubu to Michelle Yeoh saying "flip it around!") and how AI could never make any of it xtramagazine.com/culture/tv-f...

#CanadasDragRace brings the queens into head-to-head reading duels, but who’s at the top of the class?

Democratic backsliding is not inevitable and it is preventable, writes @journodale.bsky.social.

The readers have spoken, and these were their favourite sex stories on Xtra this year

Xtra spoke with Hugh Nini and Neal Treadwell about what’s new in their volume, what’s surprising about the lives of queer men in that era and what’s left to discover about queer history.